So I got a hold of a Samsung Impression today and all i can say is wow! For a none PDA phone, this bad boy is nice! It packs a AMOLED display, 3mp camera, 3G connectivity, full touch screen, and a slide out QWERTY keyboard!
The first thing I noticed about the Impression was its display. At first I was skeptical about how much a differnce AMOLED would make. I was happily proven wrong when comparing the Impression to the Samsung Eternity (none AMOLED). The Impression’s screen was brighter, colors looked better, and everything seems more vibrant. It does have haptics for a nice sense of feedback and the OS moves very smooth. One thing I really like is the scrolling is like the iPhone, in that you move things “up” with your finger instead of the opposite direction like the LG VU. There is also the rubberband effect when you reach the end of a list, which is a nice touch and visually appealing. In portrait mode you can use the onscreen keyboard to text in T9. It also has a hand writing option as well, although I found it pretty difficult to use.
The Samsung Impression also hurdles over text entry issues by providing you with a full slide out keyboard. The keyboard also is quite large, and the buttons are space apart nicely. The only issue I ran inti, is a common one with slideout keyboards, the top row of buttons. The top row is easy enough to hit with your thumb, but the screen sits almost right on top of the buttons. The results in sometimes hitting the screen instead of the button or the buttons below the top row. Not a big deal at all, after using the phone for a little bit, I trained my thumbs to hit the appropriate keys.
As with most Samsung phones now a days, the Impression comes with TouchWiz. This is Samsung’s new touch oriented OS and homescreen widget manager. You have the option to drag a number of widgets on to your home screen like calendar, clock, reminders, contact favorites, photo slide show and a few others. The impression also packs CV TV and the videos are show up in full screen and load very fast. Also the web browser renders pages better than most other “dumb phones” and does it very quickly.
The Impression also sports a 3Mp camera that supports video record and AT&Ts video share service. The pictures come out very nice in good light. Since there is no flash, in low light the quality takes a small hit, but not to bad. I did not have a chance to test video share with, it seems everyone i know with AT&T has an iPhone or Bold. LOL
Overall I am very impressed with the Samsung Impression. I looks great, its responsive and is a very capable feature phone. One thing I don’t like about the Impression is the price point, $199.99 with a two year contract and mail in rebate. For that money, why not get an iPhone? The only reason I can think is if people do not want to spend the money on the data plan for the iPhone, or just really need a hardware keyboard. Maybe in a few months the price point will go down, but for now $199.99 is a little to high in my opinion. Despite the high price I have to highly recommend this phone, I really like it.
